Google Amends SerpApi Lawsuit with Content Licensing Terms

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Google amended its federal lawsuit against SerpApi on August 10, incorporating content licensing terms to address a judge’s previous dismissal of its Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) claims.

The revised complaint aims to bolster Google‘s legal strategy against search engine results page (SERP) scraping, a practice that impacts the visibility of licensed content and the functionality of artificial intelligence tools.

Chief U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers had dismissed Google’s initial DMCA claims in July, citing the absence of specific terms from Google’s content licensing agreements.

Google’s licensing contracts, which include agreements with providers like Shutterstock, mandate that Google protect licensed content from unauthorized external access and prevent third parties from downloading or reselling it, according to the amended complaint.

The July 20 ruling by Judge Gonzalez Rogers differentiated between claims involving copyrighted content, which were dismissed with leave for Google to amend, and non-copyrighted content, which were dismissed without leave to amend.

Google’s amended complaint continues to allege billions of circumventions, though it now more narrowly describes its anti-scraping technology, SearchGuard, by tying its function directly to copyrighted works licensed for Google Search results.

SerpApi, a company that provides real-time SERP data, expressed confidence in its position and stated it plans to respond to Google’s revised complaint.

Meredith Rose, policy counsel for Public Knowledge, previously noted that the judge’s initial decision highlighted the need for Google to clearly articulate how its anti-scraping measures protect specific copyrighted content.

The legal action against SerpApi is one of several cases involving search scraping, with a separate DMCA lawsuit filed by Reddit against SerpApi also progressing in the courts.

The outcome of these cases could significantly influence the future for SERP monitoring services and tools that rely on public web data.

Source: Search Engine Journal